Clothespin Dragonfly Craft

As we head into Spring make an easy dragonfly craft with the kids using a clothespin and pipe cleaners. These beautiful little bugs are easy enough for toddlers and preschoolers to make and they look really effective. There are so many ways to decorate them using gems, sequins or paint!

See lots more bug themed crafts and activities on our bug and butterfly themed activity calendar. Have you seen any dragonflies yet this year? These little flying insects are so beautiful and delicate. There is something really magical about dragonflies. Young children will love making their very own dragonfly to fly around the room with this simple craft idea. Before making this craft you could look outdoors for some real dragonflies or watch a short video clip of them. It is so interesting to look at their delicate wings and watch how they fly. See if your child can fly around the room like a dragonfly? We have a set of bug action cards if they want to try moving around the room like other bugs too!The great thing about this dragonfly craft is that you can be really creative in the way that you decorate your dragonfly. Try to make it as beautiful as these magical little insects are! After making a dragonfly you could extend this craft by making a paper plate pond for your dragonfly to live on. If you want to find out a bit more about dragonflies and other insects take a look at our bug and butterflies book list. We also have some bug colouring pages that include a dragonfly colouring page that you might like to colour after finishing this craft.

You will need:

Clothespin

Pipe Cleaners

Paint

Gems, sequins or stickers to decorate

Clothespin Dragonfly Craft

You will need one clothespin for each dragonfly that you are planning to make. The first thing that you will need to do is paint the clothespin. We used metalic paint for our dragonflies which gave them a nice sparkly shimmer.

We decided to just use one colour paint as we wanted to stick gems and sequins on top, but you could be really creative and paint stripes or patterns onto your clothespin.

If you don't want to get the paints out you could even use coloured pens to decorate your dragonfly.

Once you have finished glue on gems and sequins if that is part of your design. There is no need to wait for the paint to dry, just squirt a little extra glue along the top of the clothespin before decorating it.

Leave the decorated clothespin to dry. This will become the dragonflies body. Whilst it is drying you will have time to make the wings.

To make a set of wings you will need 2 pipe cleaners, one slightly longer than the other. Make a loop with each pipe cleaner and then twist them in the centre to create two wings.

Once you have done this with both of the pipe cleaners twist them together in the middle so that the 4 wings join each other.

Once your dragonflies body has dried you can add the wings to the body by opening up the clothespin to clip the wings in place.

Daisy (aged 3) was delighted with her dragonfly once the wings had been clipped into place. She loved flying it around the room and talking about the gems that she had chosen to make it beautiful!

We made two different dragonflies. One with a pink clothespin body with gems stuck on and purple wings and one that was painted blue with pink sequins and silver wings.

These dragonflies are so easy to make that you could easily make a whole collection of them. Try painting them in different colours and expeiment with gluing on different objects.

Once you have made your dragonflies have fun playing with them. Can you make a pond for them to live on? Try making our paper plate pond in the style of monet.

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I'm Louise, a creative mum of three and early years teacher. Messy Little Monster is a place full of art, craft and activity ideas for children. Come and join the arty, crafty, messy fun! Read more here...